Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swenk: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies

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"How many people can this replace?" is the wrong question to ask about AI.

The better question is, "What could my team do if all the busywork disappeared?"

Today's featured guest unpacks how he's embedded AI across a 12-year-old agency, why it's increased hiring instead of reducing it, and what it actually takes to make AI stick culturally, not just technically.

Gilad Bechar is the founder and CEO of Moburst, a global digital transformation agency that started as a mobile marketing shop and evolved into a full-service growth partner for some of the biggest brands in the world, Google, Microsoft, Uber, Samsung, and more.

Over the past 12 years, Moburst has completed five acquisitions and continues to acquire two to three companies per year, intentionally expanding capabilities to become a true one-stop growth shop. In our previous conversation, we talked about acquisitions and scale. This time, we focused on what Gilad calls the next major accelerator: AI.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• AI is NOT a side project.

• AI adoption could result in more hiring, not less

• How your agency team could see AI as a career transformation

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Sponsors and Resources

This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started.

Treating AI as a Strategic Priority, Not a Side Project

One of the biggest mistakes agencies make with AI is delegating it too low in the organization.

Gilad knew early on that AI wasn't a trend; it was an operational shift. Instead of hiring a junior "AI manager" or tasking a developer with experiments, he hired a VP of AI and gave that role real authority. The mandate was simple but uncomfortable: if you're doing things in 2026 the same way you did them in 2024, you're already behind.

That level of change creates friction, especially in senior teams with decades of experience. Gilad was clear that AI adoption couldn't be optional or political. A manager shouldn't have to "fight" a director or VP to change how work gets done. By putting AI leadership at the VP level, Moburst removed that bottleneck entirely.

AI wasn't framed as "your work is wrong." It was framed as "your work could be 10x more effective if we rethink the process."

They backed this up structurally. Every team has an AI Champion, someone who spends 20–30% of their time driving AI adoption within their department while still doing real client work. On top of that, there's a central AI team building protocols, agents, workflows, and even new products.

The result: AI becomes part of how the agency operates, not something people dabble in when they have extra time (which no one ever has).

Why AI Led to More Hiring, Not Less

There's a persistent fear among agency teams that AI equals layoffs. Gilad's experience has been the opposite.

The original internal goal was to increase billable capacity per employee by 50%. On paper, that could mean doing the same revenue with fewer people. In reality, what happened was far more interesting: revenue per employee increased and demand exploded.

When Moburst started showing clients what was possible, new automations, new AI-powered offerings, faster insights, smarter execution, it unlocked more budget. Clients didn't just buy services; they bought innovation. They talked about it internally. They shared it with peers. And that momentum brought in larger, more sophisticated opportunities.

Gilad shared an example where Moburst won two Fortune 10 companies in Q4, one of which came in looking for a media agency. Media alone would've won the pitch. But what sealed the deal was showing how the brand could improve visibility and positioning across AI-driven discovery platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude.

This is the key shift: AI freed up time and raised the ceiling on value. Instead of spending hours exporting spreadsheets, building decks, or manually stitching reports together, teams could focus on thinking, collaborating, and creating new growth levers for clients.

That's not a cost-cutting story. That's a growth story.

Using AI to Upgrade People, Not Replace Them

Another overlooked benefit of AI is internal career transformation.

Gilad talked openly about roles that are likely to disappear as platforms automate more of the execution. Media buying is a great example. When Google and Meta are telling the market that campaigns will soon require little more than a credit card and a website, the writing is on the wall.

Instead of pretending that isn't happening, he decided to lean into it.

Media managers, content managers, and BI specialists were given the opportunity to reskill, moving into AI-focused roles where their domain knowledge still mattered, but their output multiplied. A content manager could become an AI workflow designer. A media buyer could evolve into someone who builds and manages intelligent systems instead of manually tweaking campaigns.

This reframes AI from a threat into leverage. Employees aren't stuck defending outdated tasks; they're learning future-proof skills. That mindset shift alone changes morale, retention, and performance.

Building a Culture of AI Sharing and Experimentation

At his agency, Gilad made sharing AI knowledge non-optional. Every week, AI Champions review what's new in the AI world and translate it into what this means for our teams right now. Monthly hackathons focus the entire team on eliminating one manual process at a time. And then there's AI Week—a multi-day internal event where every team presents what they built, what worked, and what failed.

The presentations aren't dry. Teams tell stories. They demo workflows. They show where things broke and how they pivoted. Some even use AI-generated video to walk through the narrative.

That transparency matters. Failure isn't hidden, it's shared. And that creates trust, speed, and cross-team learning.

One team's solution becomes another team's shortcut. Ideas jump departments. People start asking, "How could this apply to my work?" That's when AI stops being a tool and starts becoming a multiplier.

The Bigger Takeaway for Agency Owners

You don't need a VP of AI tomorrow. You don't need hackathons or AI week or 16 champions.

But you do need to take the first step.

AI adoption doesn't start with tools. It starts with ownership. Someone has to be accountable for asking, "If we rebuilt this process today, would we still do it this way?"

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training

Most agency owners start out chasing freedom and then wake up one day realizing they've built a job they can't escape. Today's featured guest will unpack what it actually looks like to build a lifestyle-first agency that protects your time, adapts to AI, and still pays the bills without burning you out. She has run a small profitable agency for over a decade without a bloated team, nonstop chaos, or ego-driven "scale at all costs" thinking, and she breaks down how designing your agency backward from your life (not an exit slide) changes everything.

Marissa Rosen is the founder of Climate Social, a 10-year-old micro-agency built around flexibility, partnerships, and human-first marketing. She's proof you don't need a bloated team, or chaos to run a sustainable, profitable agency.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• Deciding to build a lifestyle business

• Setting clear boundaries that clients learn to respect

• Adapting roles instead of fighting change

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Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

The Lifestyle Agency Lie and How to Actually Do It Right

Marissa didn't start Climate Social with a master plan to sell it for a giant payday. She knew she cared about climate action, storytelling, and social media, and she wanted a business that fit her life. Ten years later, that intention has paid off in a very real way.

Her agency operates as a true lifestyle agency. Marissa works from home, sets her own hours, chooses her clients, and stays deeply involved in the work she enjoys most. The agency provides stability, fulfillment, and income, without requiring her to sacrifice time with her kids or burn herself out chasing scale for scale's sake.

While many agency owners seek to build an agency to sell, it's not the plan for everyone, and it's a path that usually comes with years of sacrifice. A lifestyle agency, on the other hand, is available to far more owners if they design intentionally. The key isn't size. It's clarity around what kind of life the agency is meant to support.

Setting Rules So Clients Don't Run Your Life

One of the biggest traps agency owners fall into is mistaking flexibility for chaos. They start an agency for freedom, then say yes to everything, and suddenly the business owns them.

You can avoid this by setting clear, non-negotiable rules. For example, Marissa doesn't take meetings after 3 p.m. Eastern. That's when her kids come home, and her role shifts from founder to mom. Clients know this upfront, and they respect it.

Whoever sets the rules first wins. If you don't define boundaries, your clients will do it for you. And once expectations are set early, they're much easier to maintain.

From Solo Operator to Partner-Led Agency

A major shift in Marissa's business came when she stopped trying to do everything herself. Early on, it was essentially a solo operation. Over time, she transitioned into a partner-based model, bringing in trusted specialists for branding, web development, PR, and other services.

This shift removed a massive amount of pressure. Instead of being responsible for sales and delivery and execution, Marissa focuses on strategy, relationships, and assembling the right team for each engagement. Clients get better outcomes, and she gets her time back.

This is a critical lesson for agency owners feeling stuck in the weeds. You don't need a huge team to scale intelligently, but you do need to stop being the bottleneck. Leveraging partners is often the fastest way to reclaim bandwidth without blowing up overhead.

Adapting Roles Instead of Fighting Change

We all know AI has dramatically changed certain services, especially in areas like video production and content creation. Tasks that once took days can now be done faster and cheaper, which has forced agencies to rethink pricing and positioning.

But here's the important part: AI hasn't replaced strategy, relationships, or judgment. Clients still need someone to guide them, ask the right questions, and make sure the output actually connects with the right audience. AI is a tool, not a replacement for thinking.

In some agencies, traditional media buying roles are being replaced, not eliminated by AI manager roles. Teams aren't shrinking; they're shifting.

The agencies winning right now aren't asking, "How do we avoid AI?" They're asking, "How do we use AI to save time and deliver better results?" That mindset opens up new service offerings, new efficiencies, and new value for clients.

Your role as an owner shifts from "doing" to directing.

For Marissa, marketing is H2H — human to human.

Whether it's B2B or B2C doesn't matter as much as people think. At the end of the day, buyers want to know who they're working with, what they stand for, and whether they can trust them. That's why Marissa spends so much time helping founders and executives show up authentically on social media—not just hiding behind a brand logo.

AI can help with efficiency. Automation can help with scale. But relationships are still the differentiator.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training

AI didn't wipe out SEO; it just exposed who was phoning it in. While some agencies are panicking about AI "stealing their jobs" or racing to the bottom on price, the smart ones are quietly using it to get sharper, more profitable, and more strategic. Today's featured guest has been in the SEO trenches for 15+ years and runs an agency producing millions of words of content every month.

He'll break down his perspective on what's actually happening right now, why generic AI content is worthless, how agencies should really be pricing in an AI world, and why this shift is an opportunity to move up-market instead of becoming a commodity. If you run an agency and don't want to be replaced by a robot (or undercut by one), this conversation is for you.

David Arato is the founder of Lexicon Legal Content, producing millions of words of SEO content every month for law firms and law-firm marketing agencies across North America. He's been in the SEO game for 15+ years and lived through the AI disruption firsthand.

• AI is only killing agencies that refuse to adapt

• The real problem isn't AI

• Does the SEO vs AEO matter?

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Sponsors and Resources

This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started.

AI Didn't Kill SEO; It Killed Bad Agencies That Refused to Adapt

Probably every agency owner has wondered, "If AI can write content in 30 seconds… why would clients pay us?" over the past couple of years.

David had that exact thought in December 2022 when ChatGPT dropped. He literally told his wife he might need to go back to practicing law.

Fast forward to now and AI has been nothing but good for business.

And that's the part most agency owners are missing.

The Real Problem Isn't AI, It's Commoditization

According to David, AI removed the barrier to entry for creating generic content. And once everyone can do something, it has no value.

That's why blog posts written "for SEO" are dying. Not because content doesn't work, but because copy-paste AI garbage doesn't.

Google doesn't care how content is created. They care whether it's helpful, credible, and demonstrates real experience. Especially in "your money, your life" industries like legal, finance, and healthcare.

In other words, if your agency's value prop was "we write blog posts," AI exposed how fragile that model was.

Why Smart Agencies Are Actually Winning With AI

Here's what changed for David's agency, and what should change for yours:

Before AI:

• Writers spent hours on first drafts

• Margins were capped by human time

• Strategy was an afterthought

After AI:

• AI handles the grunt work

• Humans focus on strategy, voice, expertise, and data

• Content is faster, cheaper to produce, and better

That shift matters.

Because clients aren't paying for words. They're paying for outcomes.

"SEO vs AI Search" Is the Wrong Debate

A lot of agencies are stuck arguing:

• SEO vs AEO

• SEO vs GEO

• SEO vs whatever acronym Twitter invents next week

Here's the reality: Search is becoming hybrid.

This means that, yes, AI overviews now dominate the top of Google. But organic results still matter. Paid is still there. It's all blending together.

Which means agencies need to stop selling "SEO deliverables" and start selling search visibility strategy.

Same skill set. Bigger mindset.

The Pricing Wake-Up Call

If you own an agency, you know that clients are asking for more content at lower costs.

That's not a threat. It's a forcing function.

The agencies that survive will:

• Increase volume without killing margins

• Productize strategy

• Stop selling fulfillment as their core offer

The ones that won't?

They'll stay stuck in fulfillment, stressed about margins, and quietly resentful of AI.

The Real Differentiator Going Forward

Everyone has access to the same AI tools. So could clients get the same results by themselves? Not likely

What they don't have: Your data. Your experience. Your insights from years in the trenches

That's the leverage.

And it's why authenticity, real expertise, and human connection are becoming premium assets, whether in content, video, or sales.

AI can't shake a hand, AI can't read the room, AI can't replace leadership. That's your unique value proposition.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training

Most agencies aren't fragile because of bad systems but because everything runs through the founder. One unexpected hit and the whole thing wobbles. Today's featured guest shares the real-world test no agency owner ever wants: a hemorrhagic stroke that took him out overnight. What happened next is the part every agency owner needs to hear. Because his business didn't collapse. It kept moving, clients stayed, deals closed, and trust carried the weight. If your agency can't function without you, this conversation will feel uncomfortably familiar.

Brian Franks is the founder of Where Eagles Dare, a premium branding and storytelling agency working with major retail brands like American Eagle and Five Below. He spent 20+ years rising to VP of Creative at American Eagle before launching his agency over a decade ago.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• Getting comfortable with a hard question

• How Brian built a resilient agency

• Why your network is the real asset

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Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

If You Got Hit by a Bus, Would Your Agency Survive?

Let's get uncomfortable for a second.

If you disappeared for 30 days (hospital, burnout, family emergency), would your agency come back stronger, the same… or on fire?

Most agency owners don't like that question. Because deep down, they already know the answer.

This is a question every agency owner should ask, especially if you're doing $1M–$10M, stuck in fulfillment, carrying everything in your head, and telling yourself, "I'll fix the systems later."

Brian didn't plan to test his agency this way. In February 2024, he suffered a hemorrhagic stroke and ended up in the ICU for a brain drain. It took weeks of recovery. No warning.

And his agency didn't collapse.

Here's why that matters.

Brian Didn't Build a "Big" Agency. He Built a Resilient One.

Brian spent 20 years at American Eagle, rising from graphic designer to VP of Creative. He worked with massive agencies and saw the billings. He also saw the waste and understood what actually mattered.

So when he launched Where Eagles Dare, he didn't chase headcount or ego. He sought to build:

• A small, senior team

• A premium positioning

• Deep relationships, not vendor contracts

• An agency designed around his strengths

That's the part most founders miss.

They scale complexity instead of clarity.

The Lie Agency Owners Believe

A lot of agency owners think freedom comes after scale.

More clients → more people → more systems → someday freedom.

In reality, that path usually leads to:

• Team chaos

• Thin margins

• Constant Slack pings

• And a founder who can't unplug without guilt

Brian flipped that by staying scrappy, limiting active clients, staying close to the work that mattered, and delegating the rest to people he trusted for years.

So when life punched him in the face, the agency stepped up.

Your Network Is the Real Asset

When Brian went down, his network took over.

A former American Eagle CMO stepped in to help lead. His wife helped close a major Five Below deal. Longstanding client relationships stayed solid

There was no panic, mass client churn, or revenue freefall.

That doesn't happen by accident.

That happens when you:

• Play the long game

• Treat relationships like equity

• Build trust before you need it

Most agencies don't fail because of bad marketing.

They fail because everything depends on the founder.

The Question You Can't Ignore

If you were gone for a month, would your agency be worse, the same, or better?

If the answer scares you, good.

Because it means you're still early enough to fix it.

The Real Goal Isn't Scale. It's Control

Brian's story isn't about hustle or heroics.

It's about building an agency that:

• Pays you well

• Respects your health

• Doesn't collapse without you

• Still excites you creatively

That's the real win. And if you're tired of being the bottleneck, you're stuck in fulfillment, referrals are your only growth plan, or you're not paying yourself what you should…

Then it's time to rebuild. Not bigger, but smarter.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training

When Melany Robinson lost 70% of her agency's revenue overnight during COVID, she didn't just "cut costs." She rebuilt her team around trust, ownership, and shared sacrifice and learned why keeping C players is one of the most expensive mistakes agency owners make. This episode is a masterclass in leadership, culture, and making hard decisions without losing your soul.

Guest Overview

Melany Robinson is the founder of SproutHouse, a 30-person integrated communications agency serving hospitality, real estate, and lifestyle brands. She's led her agency through rebrands, crises, and COVID, emerging stronger, leaner, and clearer on what real team culture actually means.

What You'll Learn

• Why COVID exposed the hidden cracks in most agency team structures
• The real cost of keeping "C players" during uncertain times
• How to handle massive revenue loss without destroying trust
• The mindset shift from "managing people" to leading a team
• Why retreats, alignment, and shared experiences matter more than perks

Key Takeaways

• You can't afford C players, especially during down cycles
• Shared sacrifice builds loyalty; secrecy destroys it
• Letting clients out of contracts can be a long-term growth play
• Culture isn't words on a wall. It's how people show up under pressure
• Great leaders give clarity, not control
• The best teams row in sync or the boat doesn't move

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Sponsors and Resources

This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started.

What Losing 70% of Revenue Taught One Agency Owner About Leadership

Most agency owners agree that culture matters.

But culture doesn't show up when revenue is up and clients are easy.

It shows up when 70% of your revenue disappears overnight.

That's exactly what happened to Melany Robinson, founder of Sprout House, when COVID hit. Hospitality clients vanished. Contracts evaporated. The "we'll figure it out" optimism most agency owners run on suddenly wasn't enough.

And here's the part most people won't admit:

This is where weak leadership gets exposed.

The Myth: "If I Work Hard and Treat Clients Well, Growth Is Guaranteed"

Before COVID, Melany believed what a lot of agency owners believe:

Do great work. Act with integrity. Revenue will take care of itself.

COVID blew that illusion up.

Revenue is never guaranteed. Clients don't owe you loyalty. And culture doesn't magically hold when fear enters the room.

So instead of hiding behind executive decisions, Melany did something most agency owners are terrified to do:

She brought the team into the truth.

Radical Transparency Beats Quiet Panic

Sprout House told clients they could exit contracts. No penalties.

Then Melany sat down with her team and laid out the reality: Revenue was down 70%. Something had to change.

The choice wasn't who gets cut. It was how do we survive this together?

The team chose shared compensation reductions over layoffs.

Some people left. Others stayed.

And that's when the real lesson emerged.

The Hidden Cost of C Players

C players aren't bad people. They just show up for themselves first.

In good times, they're invisible and in hard times, they drain energy, margin, and morale.

Melany realized something every scaling agency owner eventually learns the hard way: You can't afford C players during down cycles or up cycles.

They don't row in sync. They protect their seat instead of the boat.

On the contrary, A-players lean in. They sacrifice. They care about the whole.

And those people are worth everything.

Leadership Isn't Managing. It's Creating Clarity

Melany doesn't pretend to be a great "manager."

Great agency founders don't micromanage. They cast vision, set expectations, and get out of the way.

Clarity isn't being bossy. It's saying: "This is what needs to be done. By this date. I trust you to figure out how."

That's how you get leaders, not task-doers.

Why Culture Is Built Outside the Office

Sprout House invests heavily in retreats and real connection.

They take the team horseback riding, snowmobiling, swimming in cenotes, and playing games by the pool.

Not strategy decks. Not whiteboards.

Why? Because trust isn't built in Zoom meetings.

It's built when people see each other as humans instead of roles.

And when things get hard, that trust is the difference between fragmentation and resilience.

The Agency Owner Reality Check

If you're honest, you've probably felt some version of this:

• You're stuck in fulfillment

• You're carrying people who aren't carrying their weight

• Revenue feels fragile

• You're not paying yourself what you should

• You know something has to change, but you're avoiding the decision

This episode isn't about COVID.

It's about leadership.

And the uncomfortable truth that scaling requires subtraction before multiplication.

The Question Is Simple

Who's really in your boat?

Because hope isn't a strategy. And C players are more expensive than you think.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training

Most agency owners talk about selling someday, but very few actually build with that outcome in mind. They stay deeply embedded in delivery, sales, and decision-making, hoping an exit will magically appear later. In this episode, that myth gets dismantled. Today's featured guest, former owner of Dot & Company, shares how she intentionally designed a productized agency that could run without her long before an acquisition was even on the table.

After successfully selling Dot & Co to E2M, she reflects on building with exit thinking from day one, how she connected with the right buyers, how she knew it was the right deal, and what genuinely surprised her about the process.

Taylor McMaster is the former owner of Dot & Company. She built and sold a productized agency specializing in fractional account management for agencies and successfully exited to E2M after designing the business to operate without her long before the deal was on the table. If you've ever wondered what it actually takes to build an agency you can step away from, and one someone would want to buy, this conversation sets the stage.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• Making the decision to build a sellable business early on

• The role that uncloked scale

• The sales trap

• Why her exit felt easy

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Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

How to Build an Agency You Can Sell

Many agency owners say they want to sell one day, but are building a business that tells a very different story.

• They're still on every client call.

• Still approving every deliverable.

• Still the only one who can close deals.

• Still the glue holding everything together.

That's not an agency. That's a very stressful job.

For her part, Taylor decided early on that she didn't wait until she was exhausted to think about an exit.

She designed the business for it.

Exit Thinking Changes Everything

About a year into building Dot & Co, Taylor made a quiet but powerful decision:

"If I want an exit someday, I can't build this like a lifestyle business."

That one thought changed how she hired, delegated, and structured the company.

Instead of asking, "How do I do this better?" She asked, "How do I make myself unnecessary?"

That meant systematically removing herself from every critical lane:

• Fulfillment

• People management

• Operations

• Admin

• Finance

Not overnight. Not perfectly. But intentionally.

The First Hire That Most Agency Owners Avoid

Most agency owners start by hiring delivery help. However, there are multiple ways to go about this, especially if you understand where your expertise lies and where someone else could be doing a better job.

Taylor hired a people manager early because she knew managing humans was her weakest skill and her biggest future bottleneck.

That one hire unlocked scale.

Why? Because resource-heavy agencies don't break because of strategy.

They break because of people chaos.

The Agency Sales Trap and Lesson Learned

Like most founders, Taylor stayed in sales for a while. Eventually, she tried to step out and hit friction.

Sales slowed. Messaging got inconsistent. Results dipped.

For her, the lesson was that founder-led sales works because you know the stories, the nuance, the pain.

Her hindsight advice is gold for any agency owner:

Get really good at sales first, then teach it or bring in a true closer once the system exists.

Too many owners abdicate sales before they've productized it. That's how pipelines dry up and panic hiring begins.

Creating an Easy Exit… Because the Work Was Done Early

By the time E2M acquired Dot & Co, Taylor had already: taken a 6-month maternity leave, removed herself from day-to-day operations and watched the business continue to grow without her

So when the deal closed, there was no scramble. No identity meltdown. No team revolt.

Her team was excited. Clients were curious but optimistic. And Taylor was ready.

Finding Identity Without Being Trapped By Your Agency

Taylor realized something most agency owners avoid: You can love your business without owning it.

When your identity isn't trapped inside your agency, you make better decisions. You stop hoarding control. You stop being the bottleneck. You build something that actually has value with or without you.

If you're stuck in fulfillment…

If your team can't move without you…

If you're scared to step back because everything might break…

That's not a failure.

It's just a sign you've built around you instead of systems.

And that's fixable.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training

Natalie Henley, CEO of Volume Nine, is here to unpack how she bought out her agency's founder. Not through PE, not through M&A, but as a trusted insider who built her path from employee to owner. Natalie shares the behind-the-scenes story of how she structured the deal without needing an SBA loan, the mindset shifts she had to make, and how the agency survived both Google's algorithm changes and COVID-19 cratering their top clients.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• Grooming your #2 to become your successor, or become the one buying.

• Avoiding mistakes that slow down or kill an internal exit.

• Using creative financing (HELOCs, owner carry notes, balloon payments) to structure the deal.

• Knowing when an employee has what it takes to run the agency.

• Preserving trust and team stability during a leadership transition.

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This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started.

Links:

• Natalie's free AI and SEO grader tool: geo.v9digital.com

• Want to know what your agency is worth? Check out the Agency Valuation Calculator

The overlooked exit strategy: selling your agency to a team member…

Natalie started as an employee in a boutique digital firm. When it got acquired by Volume Nine, she climbed the ranks the old-school way: by taking on every problem no one else would. Over time, she ran the company. Then COVID hit.

The agency's revenue cratered. Clients disappeared. The founder wanted out.

But instead of flipping to a stranger, he turned to Natalie.

The "Oh Shit" Moment and the Deal That Followed

When the founder came to Natalie with the offer to buy, he already had the groundwork laid. He'd called the bank, scoped out an SBA loan, and gave her a number. Natalie didn't have a pile of cash sitting around, but she did have grit, resourcefulness, and inside knowledge of the business.

She didn't take the SBA route.

Instead, she pieced together a creative financing stack:

• A HELOC for the down payment

• An owner-carry note

• A balloon payment at the end

The company is paying for itself over time. No brokers. No middlemen. Just a fair, fast, founder-to-founder deal.

Why This Worked (And Why Most Don't)

Natalie had already been:

• Running the company

• Exposed to the numbers

• Made a co-owner years earlier

This wasn't a random promotion. It was a trust-built, stress-tested evolution. And it mattered. Because when the deal closed, the culture didn't collapse. The clients stayed. The team believed.

What if the best buyer for your agency is already on your team?

If you're feeling done, but still care about your agency, selling to a team member might be the cleanest win.

Here's how to set it up:

• Start grooming your #2 now. VP → President → Co-owner → Buyer.

• Expose them to EBITDA, profitability, client churn…. everything.

• Stress-test them: give scary responsibilities and see how they show up.

• Be fair. Don't squeeze every dime. The goal is continuity and peace of mind.

• Don't wait until you're burned out. Move before it's a fire drill.

Agency ownership is a wild ride. If you're looking for a graceful exit that doesn't torch your legacy, this might be it. And if you're the #2? Start acting like the owner today. You never know when the keys will be offered.

As Natalie said, "If you care about your team and the agency's legacy, you owe it to yourself to consider your employees as potential buyers. Even if they say no, at least you gave them a shot."

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training

Do you feel underpaid, misunderstood, or stuck explaining why your work costs what it costs? Most agency owners don't wake up one day and decide, "You know what sounds fun? Running an agency." They stumble into it, usually because the job market fails them.

That's exactly how today's featured guest got her start. In this episode, she'll unpack how slowly building her confidence as she gained more experienced changed her perspective on pricing and why most "thought leadership" content does more harm than good.

Alicia Disantis is the owner and creative director of 38th & Kip Studio, a dual branding and design studio celebrating 15 years in business. She founded the agency during the 2008 recession, which is about as pressure-filled a launchpad as you can imagine.

Before building a sustainable agency, Alicia wore a lot of creative hats: video game character artist for early mobile games, comic book artist for an urban vampire/werewolf series, and unpaid intern at a graphic design. These experiences heavily shaped how she thinks about value, pricing, and positioning today.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• Why agency pricing should feel scary.

• Educating clients who think your work is "easy."

• An approach to thought leadership that actually creates value.

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Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

Creating a Unique Path that Lead to Agency Ownership

Like many agency owners, Alicia didn't start with a master plan. She started with a student loan bill that arrived a month before graduation and over a hundred job applications that led nowhere.

When the traditional path failed, she did what resourceful creatives do: she pieced together work wherever she could find it. Freelance gigs turned into repeat work. Repeat work turned into confidence. And eventually, confidence turned into a business.

She went from being an unpaid intern, to game designer, to a comic book designer, and forged a unique path, going from charging just $200 for her first freelance job to earning the confidence she needed to believe she could build her own business.

Most agencies are born from survival more than a carefully thought business plan. The danger is that when you start that way, you often carry survival pricing and survival thinking far longer than you should.

That early context matters, because it explains why so many agency owners struggle to raise prices later.

From $200 Clients to Pricing That Feels Scary (In a Good Way)

Alicia's first client paid her $200. She also did a lot of free work, because at the time, that felt like the only way in.

What changed over the years wasn't some magic pricing formula. It was confidence.

Marketing and creative work is deeply undervalued, especially compared to STEM or "expert" services. People don't argue over a $250 legal consult but they will argue endlessly over a logo.

As Alicia grew, she learned three critical skills:

• Educating clients on the real cost of doing work right

• Having the confidence to say no

• Quoting prices that made her a little uncomfortable

It wasn't easy, but mostly it just took time.

How to Educate Clients Who Think a Logo Is "Easy"

Alicia managed to reframe the value of branding for skeptical clients not by arguing but by analogizing.

Instead of defending design directly, she compares it to plumbing, legal work, or real estate. You wouldn't hire a $5 freelancer to represent you in civil court, so why would you do that for the thing that represents your entire business?

This framing does two things:

• It removes emotion from the conversation

• It positions branding as expert work, not artistic preference

Clients should also understand the hidden cost of "cheap" solutions, especially with websites. Hiring a friend or a bargain provider usually leads to cut corners, broken functionality, and stalled growth when the person inevitably disappears.

The goal isn't to lead with fear. It's to calmly explain consequences and let the client decide if cheap is really cheaper.

Thought Leadership That Builds Trust (Not Clickbait)

Thought leadership is an area where Alicia found significant success creating valuable educational content. In her view, it's also something most agencies get wrong.

The problem isn't content volume. It's content relevance.

In her experience, the key to producing this content is leading with research on what people want to hear about. She's also encountered many white papers that don't even offer any takeaways or new perspectives, which ends up diluting the trust on your brand. Alicia insists that everything she produces or is a part of must have key takeaways that her audience can translate into a real technical plan.

She shared a four-part framework she uses before creating educational content:

1. Motivation – Why does the audience care right now?

2. Pain points – What problem are they actually trying to solve?

3. Literacy level – How well do they understand the subject?

4. Communication style – How do they prefer to consume information?

The literacy piece is where most agencies mess up. If you speak marketing jargon to an audience that doesn't have that literacy, you don't sound smart. You sound patronizing.

And nobody buys when they feel dumb.

Alicia is intentional about making sure everything she puts out includes tangible takeaways—things people can write down and act on. Without that, it's just noise.

Playing the Long Game with Content and Personal Brand

This podcast started over a decade ago not as a growth hack, but out of curiosity. The goal was to let listeners be a fly on the wall. The payoff took years, but now it's a massive moat. People join our community and say they've been listening for years before ever raising their hand.

That kind of trust doesn't come from ads with rented Lambos. But it also takes time and determination. Less than 7% of podcasts make it past episode three, and only about 1% make it beyond episode 23.

From Alicia's perspective, finding your unique personality and value proposition is the hardest part of business. People are afraid to be different, but different is the whole point.

Discovering your own value proposition on your own is like trying to tickle yourself. You need outside perspective to see what's actually special.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training

Do you feel you're giving everything to your agency and only getting exhaustion as a result? Agencies grow best when they're built around clarity, empathy, and self-awareness. Whether it's pricing, boundaries, team management, or AI, the common thread is intention. Today's featured guest understands that you don't need to hustle harder. You need to design smarter, around who you are, how you work best, and what kind of business you actually want to run.

She'll share her perspective on agency growth, self-awareness, leadership, and how AI should actually be used inside a modern agency and provide a real look at what it takes to build an agency that's profitable, human, and sustainable without losing yourself in the process.

Ingrid Schneider is the CEO and founder of Stay in Your Lane, a fractional CMO and franchise development agency, and Train in Your Lane, an AI education company helping teams build real AI intuition. What started as fractional work after being laid off during the pandemic has grown into a 16-person team running full marketing departments, launching brands, building LMS platforms, and training companies like Ben & Jerry's and Ace Hardware on how to actually use AI to solve problems.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• Going from survival mode to self-worth: pricing and confidence.

• How to set boundaries and protect your brain.

• Design an agency that energizes you, not drains you.

• Managing people, not just performance with a human-first approach.

Subscribe

Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio

Sponsors and Resources

This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started.

Building an Agency on Trust and Integrity

Ingrid doesn't come from a tidy, linear career path. After being laid off as a CMO during the pandemic, she made the decision to not work for anyone else again. She started doing fractional CMO work to replace her salary, focusing on trust, authenticity, and doing the work well.

What began as a solo operation three and a half years ago is now a full team serving a wide range of clients. Some rely on Ingrid's team to run their entire marketing department. Others bring them in for focused, fractional engagements. The growth didn't come from aggressive sales tactics—it came from being reliable, human, and honest about what they were good at.

Learning Your Worth and Unlearning Survival Mode

When Ingrid landed her first client, she charged $3,000 a month for two brands. And that client still complained about pricing. Like many agency owners, she was focused on replacing her salary, not building a business. Survival mode has a way of shrinking your sense of value.

Learning her worth didn't come from a pricing spreadsheet. It came from personal work deconstructing old beliefs, recognizing her own capabilities, and understanding the impact she could have on others. Ingrid talks openly about how her upbringing and past experiences shaped her tendency to underprice herself and overextend.

As her confidence grew, so did her standards. She began collecting people with grit, sometimes hiring for attitude over experience, and building a team she trusted deeply. The biggest lesson for her was: if you don't believe in your value, your pricing, and your agency, will reflect that.

Preventing Agency Burnout: How to Set Boundaries

Running a business can be incredibly stressful, which is why many owners can relate to being in fight or fly mode all the time. However, this is the worst thing for both your health and your business because chronic stress will affect your brain and get you to a point known as "flipping your lid." According to Ingrid, this term, which she learned from Dr. Daniel Siegel, describes what happens when stress pushes you into fight, flight, or freeze. Logic goes offline. Creativity disappears and everything feels harder.

For agency owners, this shows up as exhaustion, impatience, and bad decisions, and healing will mean confronting the reality that you can't run a business well if your body and brain are in survival mode.

In her case, Ingrid found healing by emphasizing boundaries as a leadership responsibility. Knowing where your value is best served, trusting your team, and recognizing when their lids are flipped allows you to lead with empathy instead of pressure. The agency doesn't need a burned-out hero. It needs a regulated, self-aware leader.

Designing an Agency That Energizes You, Not Drains You

This is a lesson that agency owners that currently feel miserable with their business and wanting to give up should learn. Drawing your boundaries will look different to everyone, but you can start by asking yourself what you want to do every day and what you never want to do again. Just draw a circle on a piece of paper and start writing. Inside: the work that gives you energy. Outside: everything that drains you. You'll see that most likely what you need is to redesign your agency around this.

You can't be all things to all people. Agency that try usually end up miserable and unprofitable. Wins and losses both matter, but only if you're paying attention to what they're teaching you.

Topline revenue means nothing if you hate how you're earning it. Sustainable growth comes from aligning what's good for the business with what actually fills your cup. That alignment is what keeps agencies alive long-term.

Managing People, Not Just Performance with a Human-First Approach

As an empath, Ingrid leads with a people-first approach rooted in Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI). When something goes wrong, she looks at three things in order: herself, the system, and then the person. Are expectations clear? Do they have the resources they need? Is she showing up with patience?

Perfectionism isn't the goal in her agency because perfection is stressful, unrealistic, and unnecessary. Instead, the focus is on doing really good work while protecting the team's mental energy. This is where AI comes in, not as a shortcut for thinking, but as a way to remove the minutia that burns people out.

This has been the case for Ingrid, who enjoys managing people. If this is not your case, then focus on hiring people who can manage themselves. But remember you have to learn to let go if you want a self-managing team. There are countless ways to reach the same outcome and speed isn't always the metric that matters most. Sometimes the "slow" work produces the best results.

Using AI to Empower Teams, Not Create More Noise

Ingrid's approach focuses on education and the fact that everyone should be training their AI intuition to be able to understand how an AI tool works and how it could help them. She trained her own intuition by changing her social media algorithms to feed her AI micro-learnings.

From there, it became about application: looking at every agency task and asking, Can AI help solve this better? Her team runs weekly "show and tell" sessions where they demo how they used AI to solve real problems.

There's also an AI policy but it's framed as a permission slip, not a rulebook. Team members can experiment with tools on a company card, and if they prove value, the agency commits.

The bigger point is this: if you're not empowering your team to use AI thoughtfully, you're holding them back. This isn't about pumping out more content—it's about freeing up human brains to do the work that actually matters.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training

Are you feeding your data into AI and assuming the insights it gives you are accurate? What if those confident-sounding answers are quietly steering you in the wrong direction?

More agency owners are turning to AI to analyze and interpret performance data, and for good reason. Used correctly, it can save massive amounts of time and move teams beyond using AI to crank out blog posts, ads, or emails faster. But when it comes to attribution, performance analysis, and real decision-making, AI has a dangerous flaw: it's often wrong with absolute confidence.

Today's featured guest understands where most agencies go wrong with AI-driven data analysis. He'll break down why large language models frequently misinterpret marketing data, how flawed inputs and assumptions lead to misleading insights, and what it actually takes to get reliable answers from AI without burning budget or making bad strategic calls.

Scott Desgrosseilliers is the founder and CEO of Wicked Reports, a marketing attribution platform built specifically for e-commerce brands doing between $5M and $50M in annual revenue. Scott has spent years deep in attribution, analytics, and now AI, figuring out how to separate real signal from noise in an ecosystem where every platform claims the win.

He'll talk about how most platforms may be misleading you and the framework he uses to bring sanity back to attribution for serious e-commerce brands.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• Why AI is sounds smart but gets marketing attribution wrong.

• Injecting intention into AI.

• The Five Forces framework to improve your AI data.

Subscribe

Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio

Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

Why AI Sounds Smart But Gets Marketing Attribution Wrong

One of the biggest myths around AI is that it's inherently "smart." Scott shared that it took eight months for Wicked Reports to release their AI analyst, not because the tech wasn't powerful, but because it was too confident while being wrong.

AI models are designed to sound affirmative. Ask them a bad question, and they'll still give you a polished answer. If you ask ChatGPT if you should jump off a bridge, it'll say, "Yes, that's a great idea," unless you explicitly train it to be critical. That's a massive problem when you're dealing with revenue attribution and ad spend decisions.

Another major issue is that AI lacks native understanding of time, which is foundational to attribution. Clicks, impressions, tags, and conversions happen in sequence over days or weeks. Without heavy rules, coaching, and sanity checks layered in, AI can't naturally interpret cause and effect. Left alone, it simply fills in gaps, and those hallucinations can cost you real money.

Why Intention and Metrics Matter More Than the AI Tool

The first thing Scott's team had to "inject" into the AI was intention. Not all campaigns exist to do the same job. Prospecting, retargeting, direct response, and existing customer campaigns each have different goals and therefore require different scoreboards.

If you don't tell the AI what the intention is for each row of data, it will make assumptions. And those assumptions are usually wrong. The "North Star" metrics and leading indicators change depending on what you're trying to accomplish. A prospecting campaign shouldn't be judged the same way as an abandoned cart flow.

The second big issue is AI's obsession with ROAS. ROAS is easy to latch onto because it gets rewarded with "thumbs up" feedback, but it's often misleading. If two-thirds of your reported revenue comes from repeat customers via email or SMS, AI might tell you your ads are crushing it when they're not. Simply separating new customers from repeat customers already puts you ahead of 95% of advertisers.

The Five Forces Framework for Making Better Attribution Decisions

To solve these problems, Scott introduced his Five Forces Framework, (intention, expectation, action, outcome, and optimization) a methodology most agencies simply aren't using.

The first force is Intention, which defines both the scoreboard and the timeframe. New customer acquisition might need a 30–90 day window to show results, while an abandoned cart campaign can be evaluated in seven days. Without this context, teams panic too early and kill campaigns that haven't had time to work.

The second force is Expectation, which is all about alignment. Brand owners often look at Shopify, GA4, Meta, Google, Klaviyo, and SMS dashboards—all showing different numbers. Without agreeing on a single version of truth, clients freak out and shut down top-of-funnel campaigns after five days because the data "doesn't look good yet." Setting expectations isn't a one-time conversation; it has to be reinforced constantly.

Reducing Drama: Use "Scale, Chill, and Kill" to Guide Ad Spend

The third force is Action, which includes launching the campaign but only after defining clear boundaries. Scott recommends setting "Scale, Chill, and Kill" zones before you spend a dollar.

For example, if your acceptable new customer acquisition cost is $50–$70, that's your Chill zone. Below $50? Scale it. Above $70? Kill it. These predefined rules remove emotion, reduce second-guessing, and dramatically lower what Scott calls "psychic stress" inside agencies and brands.

Once campaigns run, the fourth force—Outcome—is simply measuring performance against those zones. Did it scale, chill, or die?

Optimization Is More Than Creative Tweaks

Most agencies obsess over creative, constantly swapping headlines, images, and copy. For Scott, optimization should be more structured. At his agency, they use a decision log to rank potential actions by impact, focusing on whether the problem is the offer, the creative, the traffic, or the budget.

But Scott added a fourth optimization factor most teams miss: signaling. If you don't send the right signals back to ad platforms, your optimization efforts don't matter. Meta, in particular, is very good at claiming credit for conversions it didn't truly drive and if it sees quick conversions, it will chase more of those, even if they're just repeat customers.

Training Ad Platforms to Optimize for What Actually Matters

To fix this, Scott recommends creating separate events in Meta's Events Manager for new customer purchases versus repeat purchases. That way, ad sets can optimize specifically for the outcome you want.

If you're closing existing customers through email or SMS, you don't want Meta learning from those conversions. But when a new customer buys, Meta gets a clean signal and starts finding more people like them. Scott noted that when creative and offer are solid, sharpening signals alone can dramatically reduce acquisition costs within a month.

You can even go deeper by signaling based on SKU types, allowing platforms to optimize toward higher-quality or more strategic purchases—not just any conversion they can grab credit for.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.